The Black Beach: Moving Images between Swedish and Caribbean Shores

A new generation is discovering Sweden’s colonial past and we are in the midst of a new, critical momentum. This is partly due to larger public interest in questions of decolonization.

Partly it is due to new research by historian and consultant for this project, Fredrik Thomasson, on the Swedish Caribbean colony Saint-Barthélemy.

The premise of our project, The Black Beach, is that such historical research needs to be complemented with artistic research because of the nature of available historical source material, which largely consists of juridical documents that were created by the same system that enslaved people.

Departing from a silent film shot on Saint-Barthélemy by Sten Nordensköld in 1952, we ask what role artistic research can play to complement conventional historiography to resist the circumscribed, racist framework of the colonial archive: What role does imagination, speculation, and historical fiction play in knowledge production?

What are the possibilities, limits, and risks of such approaches? At stake is the future direction of the artistic research field itself.

We examine the questions in relation to music, theater, and silent films on Saint-Barthélemy as well as unique access to interviews with Caribbean poet and philosopher Édouard Glissant who offers a theoretical framework.

Dissemination of results will include an installation, experimental film, anthology, and seminars between researchers based in Sweden and the Caribbean.